The present invention relates to an object transportation apparatus for transferring articles from a supply device to a take-away device.
In particular on the processing of pharmaceutical containers such as syringes, ampoules, syringe cartridges, flasks, or vials, it is frequently necessary to move from a linear, continuous object transportation into a clocked transportation, or vice versa. Pharmaceutical containers to be inspected are thus removed from a container nest in a clocked manner and are transported into a continuous conveying path. Object transportation apparatus exist for this purpose that are intended to carry out such a transition from a clocked transportation to a linear transportation as quickly and as efficiently as possible.
It is problematic in this connection that a contacting of the pharmaceutical containers or of the articles to be transported between one another is not desired due to increased demands on manufacturing reliability. Transportation without glass contact is spoken of here since the pharmaceutical containers typically consist of plastic and do not mutually contact one another. If the linearly conveyed articles jolt against one another, cracks or other damage can form in the outer skin of the mutually abutting articles under certain circumstances. It is therefore desirable to avoid any physical contact of the articles to be conveyed to prevent damage on the transportation of these articles.
If deficient articles are rejected, the gap that thereby arises should be closed by pushing up the following articles. The maintenance of the gap in the conveying path, however, reduces the total conveying capacity and is an obstacle for renesting, that is the insertion of the articles to be transported into a storage container (the so-called nest) provided for this purpose. Robot arms are namely frequently used here that are configured to raise a plurality of articles following one another in a row out of the conveying path with one movement and to transport them into a region of the nest provided for this purpose. If there is now an empty position in the linear conveying path, it will also be present in the nest if no corresponding counter-measures are taken and it will have to be filled manually under certain circumstances.
Conversely, it can also be desirable to produce empty positions in a denester. An article, for example a container, that is to be inspected again can hereby be inserted in an empty position previously deliberately produced in a downstream inspection machine.